"Horace Gold - Inside Man & Other Science Fiction Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gold Horace)

drenching everything around. This was due to a combination of the high
surface-tension of water and the low gravity in the interior of and the only thing that
could be done about it was to roof the thing over with glass, which more or less
spoiled the effect. From a distance, though, it didn't look bad, particularly when you
observed the surrounding shops, the theater, the restaurant.
Dowd couldn't see any grass at all this time, not even the glassed-over pool. Every
square foot of the Common was covered with people. Dowd climbed to the
bandstand тАУ once there really had been a band there, and dancing on the green; but
that hadn't worked too well either, because the low gravity made even the best
dancers prone to fall all over their partners.
He picked up the loud-hailer and addressed the crowd. In a few brief words, he told
the miners what they already knew, and outlined the problem they had already faced:
"We don't have an engineer. We aren't likely to get one. We have to try to get along
without one; and that's the size of it. Now," Dowd went on, "I'll entertain a motion
that we proceed on our own power."
He got his motion and it was passed unanimously тАУ if you could call it that. At least,
there weren't any 'nay' votes, but there were also only a scattering of 'ayes' and if the
expressions on the faces of the two thousand miners and their families had been
ballots, the whole Ceres Mining Co-operative would have faced a veto that
afternoon.
The committee went back to its work. The miners returned to their homes. The
whole community kept its fingers crossed, fearing the worst.
And, two days later, an oversize blast went off and one-nineteenth of the asteroid of
Ceres was blown away into space.
First concern was casualties. Dowd raced into a pressure suit and headed a party
that grappled and clung its way around the mottled rock surface of the asteroid to
where the accident had occurred. They found the miners тАУ sheepish enough,
pinioned under what, on Earth, would have been tons of rock, some of them; but
unhurt.
The second concern was the airtightness of the living quarters and that, thank
heaven, thought Dowd, was still all right The blast had occurred seventy miles from
the town-cavern.
The third concern was тАУ the Solar System Conservation Society.
Dowd returned to the main operations area and boarded a scout rocket with Manson
and Simon Brodsky, the accountant. They jetted a few miles out into space, arrested
their relative motion and took a good long look.
Asteroid Ceres looked like a cake with a big chunk hacked out of it.
"Oh, my God," groaned Brodsky. "Now we're in for it."
Dowd said shortly: "I know."
Manson said: "What happened? Did you find out?"
Dowd shrugged. "They had the charge all figured, and then they got worried it
wasn't enough, so they added more. They were so busy arguing, they tied in with the
stored explosive and the whole business went up. Lucky they weren't all killed тАУ
maybe all of the rest of us, too!"
"You can say lucky if you want to," Brodsky complained. "I'm not so sure. This is
going to cost us our franchise, you know!"
Manson said: "You mean the Solar System Conservationists?"
"What else? Our contract said we couldn't do anything that would affect the external
appearance or the orbit of Ceres. Believe me, this does both. Look at it!"
They looked, in an atmosphere of gloom. "Curse them," Dowd said angrily. "It's a